The taste of Thy sweetness is more intoxicating than the most ancient wine.
Thy Spirit permeates every drop of this water of life flowing through my veins.
These arteries pulse with Thy bliss, surge with Thy wonder, flow with Thy grace.
Thy kiss brings me to my feet, to my tip toes, yearning for more, chasing Thy scent through the market of worldly delights, into the meadows of Thy nearness.
Under the moonlight of Thy beauty, evanescent glimmers of Thy oneness shine from the leaves and grasses, united in fractured shards of Thy light, whispering, “Welcome home, My Beloved!”

What resonates with me most is what he describes as third stage experience and relationship (or what I call identity), in which “we allow the universe to live us.” “All of us are being lived by an infinite force that is living everything.” “When you rest in this present moment, it is wide open. In your masculine, there is nothing happening.” “Finding your purpose is fully sinking into the present moment and letting reality manifest through you as a gift to all.” There’s very little stereotypically “masculine” or “feminine” in that.

I’ve been mainly focusing on Consciousness itself as the big “I” in my identity, rather than more specific objective characteristics of “masculinity,” “man,” or “male.” Before I am a man, I am I AMness itself. I’ve been looking at Consciousness as a universal identity that applies equally to both masculine and feminine, like a single larger circle and center pivot point that encompasses and roots the overlapping circles of masculine/feminine, yin/yang. In my experience and view, one can sometimes identify so much with one’s polar identity that some universal consciousness attributes can become weakened, and over-dependence on the complimentary polarity can result. Whereas keeping the polar identity in a second position to the singular universal “I” of Consciousness can both ground and also invigorate the polarity identity, by giving it foundation as well as a greater scope and potential. One can always look at the point of common unity in a duality, and that’s generally the best place to relax into in a polar relationship.

However, it’s interesting that David names the highest expression of the masculine as consciousness, and the feminine as something else like light, energy, radiance, and emotion, if I’m reading it correctly. I tend to see this as a colorization caused by his own natural masculine lense, and the historical “male-gazing spiritual traditions,” as he mentions. In my opinion, by letting one of the polarities “own” consciousness, it perpetuates a conceptual duality.

My intuition leads me to name the highest of both polarities as pure consciousness or light, with the masculine having a hue with a penetrating quality, and the feminine having a hue with a surrounding or encompassing quality, etc. The duality is one of complimentary hues, rather than separate characteristics. But this is just an attempt to find the right words for something that is profoundly transcendent over names and labels.

I’ll most likely reread it at some point to get more of what he’s saying.

I did it again. I proceeded into a sexual relationship even though upon our first kiss, I felt a degree of a no, or something essential missing. The thing is, I also felt a degree of a yes, but it was not an infinite, spiritual, “this is it” yes. Rather, it was more a physical, temporal, “I want you” yes, mixed with some fantasy, dream, “you seem like an idea of a kind of woman I imagine that I want to be with” yes. But the essential infinite, all-encompassing, whole body-soul-mind-spirit, “I’m open to this all the way in my heart and am completely in awe of the infinite beauty of this eternal experience” yes was present only to a limited degree, and was too weak in comparison with the physical attraction and dream projection. And I’m re-discovering again, for the nth time, that this spiritual yes is the most important one – and really the only one that matters at all. The others are empty husks, reflections several degrees removed from the source of true happiness: spiritual oneness.

Unfortunately, almost every single sexual relationship I’ve entered into has begun with a similar experience of the spiritual yes missing entirely or only present in a marginal degree. My most recent lovers have been the highest degree of presence of this spiritual yes, but it’s still been less than an infinite eternal one. Is this even attainable? My pattern has been to override my spiritual no/maybe and proceed with the lower forms of yes. And I have been with many lovers (30).

I’m sorry, God, and my Self, for sacrificing the possibility of an infinite spiritual union for a handful of moments of fleeting transitory fornication, of carnal tension release, of opening the gates of love-bonding too soon or at the wrong time.

What is the critical and essential ingredient that could possibly bring this infinite spiritual yes to fruition, if any? One factor that I increasingly consider is the desire, openness, and intention for a conception of a child to occur as a result of love-making. This is the most literal, fundamental, and tangibly eternal union of two beings. Yes, the spiritual heart bond that can result from two lovers uniting in love-making can so entangle the particles of their energetic beings that they feel each other’s heart beats from across the planet, and know when something happens to each other instantly. But these hearts can also become dis-entangled with time , and I increasingly see this quantum heart entanglement as a secondary effect in direct service of the physical uniting of each other’s DNA into a new being. This physical DNA binding, when combined with the spiritual quantum entanglement of the lovers’ hearts, is the raison d’être of life. Life brings forth life, which brings forth life, which brings forth life, etc.

I’ve only a few times had the experience of love-making in which I was open to the possibility of a child being conceived. But never was this a mutual agreed upon experience with my partner. Every time it was a moment of passion in which the experience of cumming inside my lover overwhelmed me at the moment of orgasm, a moment in which I made the choice that if a new someone were to be conceived in this moment, that would be fine with me. However, in every case, my partner did not agree with my spontaneous decision. And even though they have been extremely caring and understanding, in no case was there an expression of approval for having taken such a liberty with their fertility. They, after all, are the ones who are immeasurably more impacted by the reality of conception than I, the man, am.

Making a baby is a big deal. One not to be taken lightly. Creating a new being and raising them up to be a good person is the most important and significant act we can possibly do in this world. The imperative to take this responsibility seriously is I think the main factor in why my sexual relationships have consistently been superficial and unfulfilling. I’ve yet to be with someone with whom I would happily and with no second thoughts enter into parenthood and devote the rest of my life to being a father and a husband.

So now what? Do I stop having sex? I’ve been contemplating taking a one year break from sex, to clear my slate, to get clear on what I want, and to give myself a chance to be more sure of what any potential partner really brings to the union. But really, do I just want to take a year break from a sex-driven union? Or is what I really want instead rather to shift to a completely different paradigm? Rather than taking a break from sex, maybe what I’m really wanting is to stop having shallow sexual relationships and instead enter into a divine and sacred union of conception and parenthood with a soul mate and partner for life. In this union, we don’t have mere sex, rather we make divine love. In this view, may my next lover be my sacred wife forever.

I’m 100% in agreement that we need complementary currencies to increase the sustainability of our trade networks, both alternative forms (like the e-dollar) of the main competitive debt-based national currencies, but also, and especially, other types of currencies based on different rules (such as to facilitate cooperation over competition, or to incentivize local trade over global trade, etc).

One recurring question I have is: to what degree would having a universal protocol for trading different currencies facilitate there being more of them commonly and easily used and exchanged?

One reason I’m enamoured with Ripple’s and Stellar’s designs is that they facilitate trade between currencies (which can be virtual currencies or proxies for other things). One potential problem is that they enforce the use of their own monopoly currency in order to transact these other currencies. This is why I’m curious as to the potential of a plain ‘bare bones’ trade protocol based on the federated consensus protocol (FCP) that is free from any direct linkage with an underlying transaction currency. This might be useful for facilitating trading information flow between disparate actors completely free of any single central currency or network. The primary driving question for this is whether it would be intrinsically useful and valuable enough in its own right to motivate use and validation without the incentive of the built-in transaction fees that are provided by XRP/STR currencies. This is similar to how the internet itself operates. ISPs and internet backbones are incentivized to provide data flow based on out-of-band financial agreements. The beauty of ripple/stellar/ethereum is that they build the validation incentive right into the system. But they are precomposed of several layers of protocols into one system. My question is what value is there in refactoring the trade protocol layer into its own standalone protocol.

Ethereum takes the transaction currency (the Ether) a huge leap further by enabling logic to be validated with it. In some ways this is orthogonal to the idea above of the benefit of a bare-bones implementation of an FCP-based trading protocol. Ethereum has its own consensus protocol and makes it possible to define a Ripple-like trading network directly on the Ethereum block chain. The potential problem is that it again creates a dependence on the Ethereum central (monopoly?) currency in order to transact.

My curiosity remains as to whether there’s some benefit to there being a pure definition of an FCP-based trading protocol, one that’s completely free of any one underlying monopoly currency system. In some ways it would be a pure protocol in the sense that it would exist primarily as a white paper or protocol description document. It would exist materially first as a reference implementation that runs based purely on intrinsic motivation, and later by various implementations on top of any or all specific information exchange systems, block-chain or otherwise. Perhaps it would just be what Ripple and Stellar already are, but without the XRP/STR layers.

The potential benefit from having this sort of generic FCP trading protocol is akin to having a universal DSL (domain specific language) for currency trading. My sense is that this would foster greater ability for intrinsically motivated parties to get up and running with trading a new currency. Cyclos provides a great product for getting up and running quickly with a new currency, but it does so solely through creating a new walled and isolated garden. A universal protocol for trading currencies would facilitate more communication between different and disparate currency systems.

The goal: an app hosting system that is emergent from that which is hosted.
The beginning: a component consisting of one UI button that when clicked begins a component creation/extension process that can both construct its own self and any larger system composed of self-emergent pieces. This larger system includes within it this same ability to modify and extend itself.

Primary aspects are the approach to self building and the final user view. WordPress is increasingly adding features that Drupal pioneered in terms of abstracting the notion of what is a “post”, or a “node” in Drupal, to make it easier to add custom content types. You can create a new content type, add predefined or custom fields to it, to create something specific like “Product” or “Article” and to differentiate it from a blog post or web page using different fields. These are CMSy things. In attempting to actually use these systems on both Drupal and WordPress, I’ve found that there is a conceptual difference between the backend user interface for generating these custom content types, and the front end display. Usually, the backend system works well for creating the data schema and editing the data, but there are large obstacles for creating and using the display part work without a lot of custom front end work. The biggest trouble with both the backend and the frontend is that they have strong opinions about how the data is stored in the DB and significant platform requirements for how the data is displayed within the context of the pre-existing WordPress and Drupal way of doing things. Both pretty much require using custom templates and display themes to really make use of the custom types, and even then, the designer needs to know the platform specific ways of doing things. This then spreads the custom types logic out between very different layers: DB storage for data schema, DB storage for data, business logic in a code module, display logic in templates (stored either in a DB or in code), display style in a theme.

One challenge I keep running into is how to abstract this CMS idea of custom content types on the backend side even more, and yet at the same time how to make all the pieces work together even better out of the box on the frontend display and usability side. The Ceptr and Om.Next approaches seem to be heading in similar directions of encapsulating all the parts of a given unit of system into one package that is constructed with specific rules to make it interoperable with other packages. The notion here is more one of self-contained packages that adhere to global protocols of package interoperability. I can imagine abstracting WordPress and Drupal modules further to arrive at a similar place. I can imagine a WordPress Ceptr module that acts as a container for running this new kind of module. This container module could itself be, or include, a module generator for creating new modules, and even for modifying itself, since it’s generated from its own self-emergent creation methods.

Do you see your self as a spirit warrior? I see being a spirit warrior, one who practices spiritual warfare, to be as much about burning away external energy vampires and cleansing internal parasites as it is about allowing some aspects of one’s self to die so that some aspects may live. I have been deepening in this perspective especially in the past month starting with intimate contact with a woman who sees her self as a Spirit Warrior, and then subsequently being amplified through listening to the lyrics over and over of Ayla Nereo’s song, Show Yourself, while remixing it. I interpret the words of the song to be spoken toward a masculine self identity that objectifies the feminine: “I do not show my skin for you, I show my self to know my self, and for the earth from which I came. I pray for you to do the same.” The chorus, “I release you,” seems relevant here. By releasing the negative masculine’s self identity from her scope of influence, she releases her self from its binding. Another line was particularly powerful for me, as I came into this remix process soon after being ill and feeling like I was allowing a less healthy aspect of my self to die, so that a more healthy aspect might live: “You can call her back to you, you can die, die, die, die, bye, bye, die, die, die.” I interpret this line to be telling the masculine self identity that in order to call back the powerful feminine who rejected him, he must allow the “negative,” objectifying aspect of his self identity to die.

This is my first remix, and was a last minute effort. I spent about 30 hours total on it across two days. I knew I would regret it if I passed up the opportunity to participate in Ayla’s remix contest, even though I have no expectation of having my track chosen. It was such a pleasure to listen so closely to the nuances of feeling in Ayla’s beautiful voice over and over, always fresh and inspiring. Thank you Ayla for putting your stems out to be remixed!

Time is a fire we burn in, we breath it in, soak in it, push it out, work it with our hands, fingers, minds. It flows in streams between our temples, out through our pores, connecting all atoms in a dance of transmission, progression in sequence. Time is a pattern of vibration linking one state of being with another, and another, and another, ever forward, onward, even while shining in reverse. Light connects the forward and the backward in the sequence, lighting up the way, and showing where we’ve been. It’s a neutral party to the endless stepping forward of time, even an enabler, a translator from one state to another, brought on by the flow of heat from hot towards cool, steady state, thermal transfer. This is life, caught in an eddy between the lines in the motion of currents of hot magma, the molten rock of existence.

What should I do about this? What is this power you have to stir up this little vortex of longing within me? I am usually fairly content being alone, all one. But today, there’s this extra pull, a void of sorts, saying, “Where is she? Where is she?” This voice is always here, but yesterday, it was ignorable, and I could go about my business, business as usual. But today, this desire has sprung up, a fresh a seedling, sprouting its arms above the earth, out of the dirt along the path I walk daily. Such a beauty, reaching for the sun with its outstretched green hands, and rooting its grey way into the soil. This desire for life comes suddenly and redefines my experience of this present moment. This desire for existence, for being. This is my raison d’être, my reason for being, free. This IS my being, this fire, this eternal flame.

I perceive this flame is strong in you, fueled by a constant pull of opposites, light of the south, dark of the north, and harmonized by the divine unity present in all of Reality. This is the “chaos maker” that you try to control, to balance. Not too much, but please not too little. It feels so good to let it spin, to unleash it upon the earth, upon the hearts of men, upon the eyes of all beings, even the stones beneath your feet, and the moon above your head. This cosmic dipole embedded within your being, is your being, and must be felt to be believed, and then comes a knowing, deeper than any programmed belief can ever hope to achieve. Feeling this being brings a knowledge of the deepest dark where only the slightest bit of light can reach, and only enough to know, “yes, this is it; this is the reason for being. This IS being.”

When we gazed into each other’s eyes, what did you see? After a little eternity, you suddenly looked into the fire, to your left. Was that in response to a perception of me, a memory, or both, or some other reason to flee? A penny for your thoughts. What is the me of which you see? Did you see through the clouds into the eternity? Did you find that place where the who, the what, the why, the how, and the when all harmonize into one grand symphony? … and continuously sing, “aaahhh, yes! I am me! I am free! I am whom I wish to be! I am here now! I am! I am! I am! Aaaaahhhhh, yaaaaaaaaa!”

I hope so.

So anyway, this is all my way of saying thank you for stirring me up! If I had your number I would call you and say, “please please me and come out and play with me today. It’s a beautiful day to play!”

I just watched a good talk by Alec Muffet about how our smart phones are amazing computers, but that we are being kept prisoners inside walled gardens by our mobile providers and prevented from having full internet connectivity.

I keep thinking since I heard Eben Moglen talk about the #FreedomBox at an Internet Society conference in NY, that we need a #FreedomPhone movement. A first step might be to support a mobile phone manufacturer that attempts to build a more open-friendly phone like the GeeksPhone

Another step would be to increase demand for the WiMAX (4G wireless broadband) open protocols in the phone (LTE is also 4G but is created by existing wireless providers) and start putting up these towers in communities, possibly with the option of acting as a roaming tower for existing phone providers that use WiMAX (Sprint here in the States). This could be done as a for-profit venture, getting smaller communities on 4G while at the same time enabling local community information freedom. One selling point would be that a local community could communicate wirelessly with its self for free, or outside for a small nominal VOIP level rate like $0.01/minute.

The technology is converging on VOIP everywhere, which is just voice sent over internet data packets. I think existing voice providers is transforming to walled garden internet service providers (AOL style), which is also why they’re selling these amazing handheld computers that can’t act as standalone internet peers. “Freedom” 4G (WiMAX / LTE) towers that would allow being a peer on the internet, and pressure put on the existing providers by the users would be steps in the right direction.

I think for pressure to be brought by users, there would need to be a compelling use case, “meme,” or app that would make users want it enough to bug their providers for it, or more likely, to ditch their “providers” for the Freedom alternative. I’m not sure what this game changing meme might be for others, but for me it would be a personal social networking node (Diaspora) running on the phone, with private and secure P2P text, voice, and video, including a legacy “phone number” for connecting to land lines, mobile phone prisoners, etc. This phone would then sync to my FreedomBox at my home for keeping my data secure in case my phone is stolen or lost. I could also use the home box for converting the VOIP to a legacy land line “phone call,” or a VOIP provider (like voip.ms) could be used for $0.01/minute. In all these situations, the wireless and land services are just barebones internet providers, utilities essentially, whether by a corporation or a local community.